Trooper: Route 24 is unforgiving

Along many sections of Route 24 there are no breakdown lanes, giving drivers no latitude to drift even slightly off the highway.

Kyle Alspach

Along many sections of Route 24 there are no breakdown lanes, giving drivers no latitude to drift even slightly off the highway.

“It's unforgiving,” State police Lt. Daniel Mulkern said at a meeting held Thursday to discuss the highway's safety.

Officials said reconstructing Route 24 to meet interstate design standards would dramatically reduce the number of accidents.

Mulkern said that because of the lack of shoulders on parts of the highway, errant drivers often bounce off the guardrail or median and then crash into other vehicles in traffic.

Interstate 495, by contrast, has plenty of room on its sides, he said.

“Driving behavior is just as bad on both highways,” said Mulkern, who works out of the Middleboro barracks. “But on 495, it's not an issue because the roadway allows for a lot of those things.”

The section of Route 24 that runs through the Brockton area sees more than 100,000 vehicles per day, an issue which officials say is aggravated by an often-dangerous design.

State, local and federal officials gathered at the Old Colony Planning Council in Brockton to offer their critiques. The meeting frequently turned to the idea of bringing the local section of Route 24 up to interstate standards.

Accomplishing this would provide wider shoulders on the sides of the highway, improvements to interchanges and reconstruction of underpass bridges.

The estimated cost to upgrade the 16-mile stretch of highway from the Stoughton line to the southern end of Bridgewater is $244 million.

Officials only discussed this section of the 40-mile highway on Thursday.

Charles Kilmer, Old Colony's transportation program manager, said the improvement project won't happen any time soon, but he hopes momentum is building to start the process.

Both his agency and another planning organization, the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District, are pushing for the work to be scheduled and funded by the state and federal governments.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who was not at the meeting, said in an interview that he recognizes Route 24 needs help.

“We have it as a priority to get more money for (Route) 24,” said Frank, noting he has helped secure federal money to reconstruct the problematic highway interchange at Route 140 in Taunton.

The feedback at Thursday's meeting was recorded by Mike Knodler, an assistant professor at UMass-Amherst, who will put together a report that could be used to support future improvement projects.

The state Highway Department is working with UMass researchers to gather information in this fashion about 20 different roads around the state.

Next Tuesday, a similar review will be carried out for Thatcher Street, a high-crash road running between Brockton and East Bridgewater.

Kyle Alspach can be reached at kalspach@enterprisenews.com.

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